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Aerdan posted:Taking advantage of flaws in a game's programming to give yourself advantages the programmers didn't intend for you to have is cheating, whatever justification you try to make. The only difference between abusing glitches and using PAR (or GG or whatever) codes is that glitches can be used in-game. Speedruns may set whatever conditions they want, so it doesn't really matter, but trying to claim that abusing glitches isn't cheating is sophistry, plain and simple. I disagree with this in spirit, though not in the specific case. Getting around the original intention of a game designer isn't automatically cheating, most glitches aren't either, any more than knowing and exploiting the patterns of the AI. In a platformer, being able to make a jump that the programmers didn't intend, or in an RPG being able to beat a boss you're not suppose to isn't cheating, it's the way you do it that makes it cheating or not. The game itself is the ruleset the programmers gave you. Finding an exploit in the rules isn't cheating, though it might be unsportsmanlike. That said, crashing the game to cause the game not to know which phase is occurring and thus default to player control, that's definitely cheating. That's introducing new rules on the fly. And yes, I wrote the FAQ way back in the day. Looking back, it was probably a torch tile that created the impression that the glitch could be done without the panels. The torch tile does give me a better idea about why the code doesn't know which routine is supposed to be in control and thus defaults to player control, though. Not that that's useful outside of theorycrafting.
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Mar 16, 2015 19:31
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Me, I use the "aw, come on" rule. If it makes me want to say "aw, come on", it's probably fishy. I am not a scientist. For example, those Pokemon speed runs that use buffer overruns (coding errors) to forcibly trigger the credits sequence. The speed runners will call that winning the game in like three minutes. And in their defence, they don't do anything outside the game and you can reproduce their results even using just a big grey Game Boy. I say, come on. Sorites fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 19:48
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What's the point in doing a challenge run if you use an exploit to remove one of the things that make it challenging?
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Mar 16, 2015 20:41
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My view is this: calling anything in a single player experience cheating is a bit of a loaded statement. Even if it technically is, we can all agree there's a large gap between using a glitch to make a game easier than intended and, say, trying to look at your opponent's hand in a card game. As for the aforementioned single player experiences, it depends on what you're trying to do. If you're doing what Melth is and deliberately undergoing a specific challenge with the intention of showing off your skills and knowledge, then going and using the Mine glitch or such is definitely out of the spirit of what you're trying to do. The last part is the important thing. Let's say you're doing what we're seeing in the thread here, trying to max rank Hector Hard Mode. If your goal is merely to get those five stars in each category on your info screen, it doesn't really matter how you do it. If you feel one way of doing it is more or less legitimate than another, then go with whatever you feel. As long as you enjoy how you get there, then have fun. If you're deliberately trying to show off your skills, showing how you can conquer a challenge within whatever limits you've set down, then that's where you don't want to be doing anything untoward. This gets difficult, of course, but it's all about the limits of however you decide to play. It doesn't take much skill or knowledge of the game in order to place a mine, soft-reset, and make everything drop their weapons. Anyone can get through a really hard map that way. Some games this is harder in. For example, a challenge run in Final Fantasy VI (not Advance) would naturally be taking advantage of the glitch that makes Magic Evasion count for both physical and magic evasion. Not even by community acceptance or anything, just that it's impossible to not use that glitch.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:12
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Just because it's interesting to think about: Using the Mine Glitch in the 'standard' way, making everyone disarm, might be super unproductive in a ranking run. It's so much slower running around murdering everyone during Player Phase. I reckon Mine Glitching in a ranking run would mostly involve positioning enemies to reach your meat-grinder units faster, while keeping them armed so they incur counters. Manipulating drops (notably the Uber Spear) would be something else altogether. Does the Uber Spear have a value?
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Mar 16, 2015 21:21
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Sorites posted:Just because it's interesting to think about : Using the Mine Glitch in the 'standard' way, making everyone disarm, might be super unproductive in a ranking run. It's so much slower running around murdering everyone during Player Phase. I reckon Mine Glitching in a ranking run would mostly involve positioning enemies to reach your meat-grinder units faster, while keeping them armed so they incur counters. Yeah, if you were trying to max rank while using the mine glitch you wouldn't make the enemy drop ALL their weapons. You would make the problem people (guys with bolting, etc.) drop their problem weapons and have the people with droppable weapons trade with whoever has the most valuable weapons around. And you'd have the highest level people disarm themselves so that you could easily feed them to whoever you want for massive XP boosting. Amusingly, the uber spear has a relatively lowish value of 1500 (100 per shot). A regular spear has an insanely high value of 9000 (600 per shot).
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Mar 16, 2015 21:37
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Where it's just one player concerned, it's really a purely moral concern. You know if you're doing right or wrong, it's case by case and entirely fluid and for the most part entirely arbitrary. (One of the many, many harms inflicted upon gaming by the proliferation of Achievements is the sudden notion that you are gaining anything by cheating at videogames). Speedruns have a whole bunch of different categories for a reason. Okay, so you can clear a game in minutes by exploiting weird-rear end memory hax. That's cool in and of itself! But there are also "legit" speed runs for many, many different and very specific interpretations of "legit". There's a whole bunch of stuff besides the Mine Glitch that people use to get ahead fast in FE7 (I recall something about moving a bunch of units onto one square). Or you can ignore realtime and go for low turn count. Or fastest to end with all* characters. Or lowest possible levels. Or... or... or... Most games will have a number of speedrun categories (that real people will track) equal to the number of exploits found ^ 2, based on various combinations of these being allowed or disallowed. My personal favourite IntSys turn-based game speedrunning strategy remains the glitch in Advance Wars that allows you to run both the Campaign and Design Maps interfaces at the same time and literally delete enemy units until you win.
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Mar 16, 2015 22:02
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Fedule posted:Where it's just one player concerned, it's really a purely moral concern. You know if you're doing right or wrong, it's case by case and entirely fluid and for the most part entirely arbitrary. (One of the many, many harms inflicted upon gaming by the proliferation of Achievements is the sudden notion that you are gaining anything by cheating at videogames). Wait, how is morality involved if it's just one person playing a single-player game? No one is hurt, no one is treated unfairly, or anything if that one person uses a cheat code or a glitch or whatever. Fedule posted:Speedruns have a whole bunch of different categories for a reason. Okay, so you can clear a game in minutes by exploiting weird-rear end memory hax. That's cool in and of itself! But there are also "legit" speed runs for many, many different and very specific interpretations of "legit". There's a whole bunch of stuff besides the Mine Glitch that people use to get ahead fast in FE7 (I recall something about moving a bunch of units onto one square). Or you can ignore realtime and go for low turn count. Or fastest to end with all* characters. Or lowest possible levels. Or... or... or... Most games will have a number of speedrun categories (that real people will track) equal to the number of exploits found ^ 2, based on various combinations of these being allowed or disallowed. This. I was going to say something a bit like this. Everyone has their own different idea of what a 'legit' run looks like. To talk about HHM max ranking for example, the FE community at large generally believes that you must S rank Lyn's story but that it's totally cool to skip over 19xx and 32x. I say Lyn's story is graded entirely separately and is outright optional, so the notion that you must S rank it and then HHM in one playthrough is absurd. And I also say that you haven't even beaten HHM at all- let alone S ranked it- if you skip any levels. And then there's all kinds of other imaginable restrictions. Arena grinding and gate grinding aren't glitches or cheats or anything, but some people think they're ok and some people (like me) don't. Or maybe some guy says, I don't know, you shouldn't use pre-promotes because that's letting the game save you too much money. Or you shouldn't play Lyn's story at all because it makes things easier. Or you must use only Wil because anyone else is OP. And everyone can make a fairly reasonable argument for why they think their own restrictions are the important ones based on their own values and premises. Me, I have this idea that I'm supposed to play in the way the designers intended. I don't think they foresaw gate grinding in Lyn's story or Ninis's grace assisted, rescue-dropping arena abuse. They certainly didn't foresee the mine glitch. They clearly made Lyn's story a good way to prepare for HHM and you HAVE to do it on your first play through, so I think they intended for us to play it every time we do any kind of playthrough. But on the other hand, they chose to grade it entirely separately so I think they didn't necessarily intend for us to act like we HAVE to S-rank Lyn's story to S-rank Hector's. I also think they meant for us to play every single chapter and recruit every single character, so usually I'd recruit Farina. But in this case, I'm not just trying to show you the way I like to do things; to some extent I'm also trying to explain the smart way of beating HHM, which involves not spending all your money on a mediocre character.
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Mar 16, 2015 22:31
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My basic point is that making a conscious decision to use a bug in order to make the game easier is cheating. If it's a problem that can't be avoided, that's one thing. If it allows you to go out of order (sequence-break) but you still have to complete objectives, that's another thing and doesn't qualify anyway because you still have to complete the objectives. That said, if you don't care about the purity of your gaming experience, you can do whatever you want. The 'morality' question is kind of moot, since the only person you're scamming out of a legitimate experience by abusing glitches is yourself. But you're still taking away from the legitimate experience, so it's still cheating.
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Mar 16, 2015 22:53
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I guess things kinda spun out of control. I just think some words on gate grinding/arena abuse/mine glitch as a war room, along with why you're not doing them would be useful for when this is archived. Also including the previous discussion about the RNG seed.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:07
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Melth posted:Wait, how is morality involved if it's just one person playing a single-player game? No one is hurt, no one is treated unfairly, or anything if that one person uses a cheat code or a glitch or whatever. As I said, the distinction is only just barely on the happy side of entirely arbitrary. It's personal, and case by case, and change nothing except what you consider yourself to have accomplished. I don't consider myself to have "beaten" HHM. I have, in point of fact, played it through on GBA hardware from beginning to credits, however I also used basically all the exploits you can get away with on actual hardware, including the Mine Glitch, RNG manipulation (albeit crude, where you can only tell if the numbers are high or low), arena abuse, etc, and of course got an abysmal rank. Really I was just curious about the extra content and we didn't have LP in those dark days. "Morality" is involved only in that because of this, if I told you I had beaten HHM I would be lying, from my perspective, even though from as close to an objective perspective as the subject matter allows it is the truth. On the flipside of this, I consider some of your concessions to "legitness" to be overkill (though I respect them all the same). Chief example; you stick with mistakes, and often switch strategies when retrying maps. I wouldn't consider this necessary, and if I'd done those things but otherwise done more or less the same things you did I would consider myself to have "beaten" HHM fairly. You, evidently, do not think this. There is no argument in favour of either of us that is not entirely arbitrary and personal; you do that stuff because that's what you consider fair, and I don't because I don't think it' necessary.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:08
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Maybe it's just me, but I don't see how you can "arena grind" with the fairly strict turn count requirements in a ranking run.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:21
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Dr Pepper posted:Maybe it's just me, but I don't see how you can "arena grind" with the fairly strict turn count requirements in a ranking run. Yeah, this. I wouldn't consider using the arena (or gates) to really be cheating in a ranked run, as you have to consider your turn constraint. Would it be as impressive as not using the arena? Of course not, but it'd still be legitimate. I would look down on the mine glitch, though, because it's not a part of the base game mechanics (unlike, say, arenas or tile regeneration) and exploits an unintended error.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:24
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Dr Pepper posted:Maybe it's just me, but I don't see how you can "arena grind" with the fairly strict turn count requirements in a ranking run. I also don't see how people are lumping in arena use with any of the other poo poo they're mentioning. Its a deliberately placed mechanic and completely intended by the developers. Its been a thing in many Fire Emblem games, especially FE4. Just because it is really good and useful doesn't make it a 'glitch' or 'cheating'  Incidently, it is also why I don't understand people who bitch about infinitely repeatable battles in Awakening. Its a hell of a lot easier to grind in any game with an arena and no world map, and if you make one form of grinding 'off limits!!!' then why not just make the other one 'off limits' as well? Even in FE8, which is the only game to actually have both, its easier to just arena grind than deal with the Tower of Valni bullshit or random encounters that give fuckall exp. Zore fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 23:27
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weso12 posted:While I know I should drop the conversation, especially because I'm literally going into semantics right now I feel should point out that by the dictionary definition, act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or examination, glitches (or even cheat codes) in a single player experience aren't really cheating. You are doing exactly that, though. You're taking advantage of something the developers did not intend you to have, which is outside the rules of the game, to create an unfair advantage that others players in that situation would not have. Yeah, other people could use it to gain the same edge but I don't see how this is a different argument than saying you can use an aimbot in a shooter to beat someone that is also using one. It is going against the developer's design for the game, which is why they patch that poo poo out nowadays even when it's innocuous stuff that doesn't break anything. A glitch existing in the game is not the developers saying "go ahead, use this!" It's going against the difficulty curve of the game. Also keep in mind that pretty much all single player games have achievements now, and a lot have leaderboards. There is a level of community to all games at this point.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:39
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I think the lesson here is that everyone defines 'cheating' slightly differently, and there's a lot of variance between the most restrictive and most generous definitions. People call arena abuse 'cheating' because it's not 'in the spirit of the game'. I think that means it changes the game from one kind of skill test to another. Fire Emblem, at its most basic, is about positioning, resource management, and valuation ("Is an opportunity to advance to the chokepoint one turn faster worth an 18% chance of losing the mission?"). But if you use the Arena to get, say, a 20/20 Canas in Port of Badon and amass a million gold, those skills no longer matter. You can just load up Merlinus with Flux tomes and let Canas solo everything. You don't have to use good positioning or manage resources, and the valuation problem can just be solved by throwing enormous stats/money at any situation. Instead, the game boils down to a one-time skill test: Are you good enough at managing the Arena minigame, or will you lose Canas and have to retry? So arena abuse rips the skill test out of the game by just giving you so much raw power that it doesn't matter. Some folks view that as 'not what the game is about'. And because cheating is one of the worst-defined words in gaming, it gets slapped on.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:43
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Dr Pepper posted:Maybe it's just me, but I don't see how you can "arena grind" with the fairly strict turn count requirements in a ranking run. Zore posted:I also don't see how people are lumping in arena use with any of the other poo poo they're mentioning. Its a deliberately placed mechanic and completely intended by the developers. Its been a thing in many Fire Emblem games, especially FE4. Generally when I'm playing.... not for ranks but "Not dicking around killing every enemy and grinding supports" I usually leave one unit who not longer has a job to fulfil at the arena and get them to grind out with a healer to keep them chugging. Usually it doesn't affect much, as by that point they've served their purpose. Also it's extra XP and Funds.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:45
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Zore posted:I also don't see how people are lumping in arena use with any of the other poo poo they're mentioning. Its a deliberately placed mechanic and completely intended by the developers. Its been a thing in many Fire Emblem games, especially FE4. This is true, but for some players FE is a game where everything is limited. Your characters, your weapons, even the amount of EXP you can get, so even though FE1 had an Arena, using it negates the challenge of managing EXP for those players. In FE4 the number of Arena fights is limited to 7 per character per chapter, and in FE8 too much encounter abuse leads to the player having a lot less items available unless they get lucky with item drops. Or use another glitch. The good news is you can beat any game without going to the Arena or optional encounters at all, so the choice is all up to whoever's playing.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:56
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People also don't like "soft" rules. If arena abuse is "perfectly fine", a large (or at least vocal; it's hard to tell) portion of the community will say: "Then the point of the game is just to reach Port of Badon. After that chapter you can't lose, so the credits might as well roll." This is arguably true, if you take a team and grind it all to 20/20 (with your Lord just going to 20, of course). For the game to stay fun and challenging, there has to be a limit on arena use. Nobody can really agree on an appropriate amount of Arena use. If it's 7, why not 8? Or 6? There are no arguments to make. And almost nobody will rally behind the idea of "a reasonable amount of Arena use", because what does that mean? So the community kind of threw up its hands and went "Okay, we'll just say no Arena use. That's the simplest hard-and-fast rule most of us can agree to." Of course, 0 is as arbitrary as 7 or 8 or 6 or 311. But nobody seems to view it that way. Sorites fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 00:00
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Important detail about Arena Grinding: to just have a character sit and fight in the Arena turn after turn isn't exactly cheating but it's very risky. The enemies all scale and they quickly start becoming very dangerous. The Arena is rigged to always be dangerous. The way you Arena Abuse is by exploiting a property of conditions that I am reasonably sure (though not certain) the developers did not foresee as exploitable; that they do not deteriorate when a unit is being rescued. There is a reason Nini's Grace only has 15 uses; because it would be broken as poo poo if you could just do that whenever you wanted, for many reasons but chief among which is that it would basically render Arenas as free EXP. As has been shown. For all that I love Awakening - and I do love it a lot because for the most part it makes itself very likeable - I have got to agree that this go-wherever fight-whenever grind-whenever style of game just doesn't suit Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is about management of very discrete resources; units, weapons, time (to an extent) and... enemies. Balance exists only because enough control is exerted over the amount of these resources that are available to the player over a run to leave a meaningful estimate of what should be expected at any given point, and careful planning - and RNG blessing - are only meaningful because you can (basically) quantify the advantages they lead to. I'm all for giving players options and I did think FE7 was a little stingy with regards to the availability of certain things but come on, man, Awakening lets you just buy Brave and Killer weapons whenever you want, with money you can farm whenever you want. To reference my last couple posts; completing FE7 feels like accomplishing something, but even playing Awakening by the rules eventually just starts feeling like cheating. Eventually, the only meaningful way of testing the player can basically only be balanced around an endgame party with wall-to-wall green numbers... and even then they managed to find a way to let people go beyond that.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:14
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Say, can you Hammerne Ninian's rings? I get that you normally wouldn't want to, but it occurs to me that I don't know whether they're "weapons", "items", or "staves" mechanically.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:21
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Sorites posted:Say, can you Hammerne Ninian's rings? I get that you normally wouldn't want to, but it occurs to me that I don't know whether they're "weapons", "items", or "staves" mechanically. I don't think so, much like Dragonstones in the other games it counts as an 'Item' and Hammerine can't be used on items.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:22
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Fedule posted:Important detail about Arena Grinding: to just have a character sit and fight in the Arena turn after turn isn't exactly cheating but it's very risky. The enemies all scale and they quickly start becoming very dangerous. The Arena is rigged to always be dangerous. That is only true if you buy the DLC. Money in Awakening is incredibly difficu lt to come by if you're trying to do random map grinding on Hard/Lunatic since Reeking Boxes are a huge net loss, you can only get three or four 'natural' encounters a day and you get, at most, like 2000 gold from each if you're incredibly lucky with a random drop and the shiny spots spit out expensive items instead of their myriad other drops. In fact the only real economical way to grind money in Awakening without the Golden Gaffe is the soul-crushing method of having Chrom/Lucina solo map after map after map with the Falchion. I remember playing Awakening at release and running out of money in the middle of the game. poo poo was rough. And that was just grinding some supports to unlock some of the kid maps. At least in games with Arenas getting some extra gold is pretty easy. I dunno, I just always feel like its weird when people are all 'FE7 is super well balanced and difficult as long as you don't boss grind/use the arena!' and 'Awakening showers you in money and experience if you use the money/experience DLCs so the balance is poo poo!' Like, no poo poo, if you don't use the easily available grinding spots in one and use the other one it'll be different and easier! Awakening just doesn't have any sort of grading system to make you make a bunch of unoptimal choices like in this run. I mean, imagine Melth actually using all the resources at his disposal right now and even just promoting everyone he wanted to and using only his best units on every chapter. It'd be a hilariously easy bloodbath. As it is he's dragging around half a team of deadweight on every level, many times people he doesn't even want to attack, and he's still fulfilling all his optional objectives. (Incidentally, Melth, great play and good strategy/tactics all around) Zore fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 00:40
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When people talk about Awakening, they generally mean all of Awakening. Cherry-picking chapters to not count doesn't really get us anywhere.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:44
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Sorites posted:When people talk about Awakening, they generally mean all of Awakening. Cherry-picking chapters to not count doesn't really get us anywhere. Much like cherry-picking the arena to not count doesn't get us anywhere when talking about FE7? Or bosses on thrones that regenerate them? And its paid, entirely optional, DLC I was talking about. Yet somehow that's more part of the game than mandatory levels with arenas, several of which are placed in a way to encourage you to use them.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:47
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Chapters are a much bigger thing than tiles.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:48
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Zore posted:That is only true if you buy the DLC. Money in Awakening is incredibly difficu lt to come by if you're trying to do random map grinding on Hard/Lunatic since Reeking Boxes are a huge net loss, you can only get three or four 'natural' encounters a day and you get, at most, like 2000 gold from each if you're incredibly lucky with a random drop and the shiny spots spit out expensive items instead of their myriad other drops. To counter, you don't really need money much for anything in Awakening. Seals and the occasional weapon restock, but there are really enough of the latter from drops that past midgame you never really have to worry about money. Plus the fact that they give you two free infinite durability swords that are effective enough for the whole game really helps.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:51
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And at least one game mode - arguably two - devolve into a virtual solo ('Frederick Emblem') without the DLCs. So it's much harder to justify calling them "a separate thing from Awakening" that doesn't factor into the discussion.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:53
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Sorites posted:And at least one game mode - arguably two - devolve into a virtual solo ('Frederick Emblem') without the DLCs. So it's much harder to justify calling them "a separate thing from Awakening" that doesn't factor into the discussion. Doing that is really stupid because it only makes the game harder. Lunatic/Lunatic+ are not good difficulties, but there are a lot more viable characters than just Frederick (and in many ways he's really bad to give EXP to after the first few chapters due to horrific bases/mediocre growths) Chrom, the Avatar, Tharja, Anna, Libra, Panne, Olivia, Nowi, Lucina and Kellam are all more viable/better than Frederick after Chapter 5 or so. Without any DLC! I mean, in relation to the rest of the cast, Frederick is probably the worst Jeigan since Jeigan. He turns out directly equivalent or worse than Seth, Titania, and FE7 Marcus in a game where the power curve is skewed a hell of a lot higher.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:07
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Money isn't impossible to come by in Awakening anyway, it's just tedious outside of the DLC. You could stack Despoil on every unit that can get it and go farming the random encounters. It'd take forever but you'd make money. If you're on Lunatic you'd be stuck with the legacy characters though, so it'd take longer.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:22
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I don't remember money being a problem in my LP of Awakening, and that was basically a no-grind run. Granted it was on Hard, but unless you're buying Silver or higher every time, you get more than enough. Especially depending if you take a couple Manaketes which drastically lowers the upkeep.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:00
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You never have to grind money unless you want to forge stuff or buy brave poo poo in bulk. If you just buy a shitload of bronze and iron weapons you'll never need money, and you never need better than those anyway. But if you do like to forge stuff, or buy a lot of expensive things, then you do need a lot more money than the game will give you through the story chapters. Especially early on when Anna might show up with a seal, you might just not have the funds to afford it. Though this is only true if you haven't unlocked bonus box rewards.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:16
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Zore posted:I also don't see how people are lumping in arena use with any of the other poo poo they're mentioning. Its a deliberately placed mechanic and completely intended by the developers. Its been a thing in many Fire Emblem games, especially FE4. I don't think anyone called it a glitch. What was totally not intended by the developers was the smart way to use the arena: put Ninis's Grace on someone, use the arena with them, rescue them immediately, drop them next turn, have Ninian dance for them, have them use the arena, have someone else rescue them, etc. You have like 95% odds of victory and 5% of being able to retreat completely safely with no chance whatsoever of death. And you can grind forever like that on a single use of Ninis's Grace. Either way, arena use completely breaks max ranking runs. Even a few rounds of it can earn you a massive bonus of money and an even more massive amount of XP. And XP is by far the hardest ranking category. I could have like 40 more turns saved up at this point easily if I wasn't always waiting around for reinforcements or taking things slowly so that I can train weak characters the way you're meant to to boost my XP. So yeah, you can gate grind or use the arena or whatever you want, but it doesn't make for an interesting LP and isn't really fun or strategic at all, so I'm not going to do it. Zore posted:Incidently, it is also why I don't understand people who bitch about infinitely repeatable battles in Awakening. Its a hell of a lot easier to grind in any game with an arena and no world map, and if you make one form of grinding 'off limits!!!' then why not just make the other one 'off limits' as well? Although I actually am a fan of the inclusion of optional repeatable battles, the notion that they're harder than using the arena is just silly. Without Ninis's Grace, using the arena has something like 90% odds of failure -quite possibly death that you can't retreat to avoid- for most characters on HHM. If your Def is good, you lose. This is because the enemy is given steel or even silver weapons if your def is good as well as souped up str. The result ends up being that your lowish def characters go up against iron weapons that 3 hit kill them or whatever and your highish def characters go up against silver weapons that 2 hit kill them and are wielded by enemies who probably double them. People like Oswin outright cannot be used in the arena in HHM in my experience, they can't defeat ANYTHING in there. And the Tower of Valni was the easiest XP in any FE title I can think of. All you had to do was repeat the first floor where 70% of the time a promoted, high level enemy entombed was right next to you. Kill it for massive XP, retreat, enter again, repeat. No chance of death that cost you more than a quarter second worth of restart time, massive XP, minimal cost. Often there'd be another entombed or two besides the boss too if you wanted to go more than one round in there. And you could do a quick check and maybe snipe anyone who had an interesting droppable weapon. Plus it let you grind up supports and such. But I'm totally ok with having a Tower of Valni or monster encounters on the minimap in FE. In fact, I think that's a good idea. It creates a very good way for new players to lower their own difficulty to exactly the level they want (including basically turning on god mode) and lets people new to that particular game try out different characters and see how they grow and whatever. As long as they're optional, I'm definitely in favor. Manatee Cannon posted:You are doing exactly that, though. You're taking advantage of something the developers did not intend you to have, which is outside the rules of the game, to create an unfair advantage that others players in that situation would not have. Yeah, other people could use it to gain the same edge but I don't see how this is a different argument than saying you can use an aimbot in a shooter to beat someone that is also using one. If you've both agreed before hand to use aim bots, then there's nothing unfair about that at all. You've just created your own houserules for the game which is perfectly fine. What's wrong is secretly using an aimbot to beat someone who isn't using one. Similarly, it would be wrong to, say manipulate the RNGs in a multiplayer match of FE7 if your opponent didn't agree that that's allowed. Or to enter some kind of speedrun competition with someone else and use a cheat device without the other party agreeing. But if someone wants to manipulate the RNG or abuse the arena or use a darned game shark or whatever playing a game singleplayer, then none of us have any right to tell them they can't or shouldn't do it. It's as absurd as saying they can't listen to classic rock in their own house because one of us doesn't like it or telling them they have to scramble their eggs, not fry them. And if the developers actually cared for some reason and didn't want this person using the mine glitch or whatever, then they also have no right to tell this person they can't do that. And it would be just as absurd for just the same reason. Things would be a lot more pleasant if fewer people considered it reasonable to tell other people what they can and cannot do for fun on their own in their own free time. Zore posted:I dunno, I just always feel like its weird when people are all 'FE7 is super well balanced and difficult as long as you don't boss grind/use the arena!' and 'Awakening showers you in money and experience if you use the money/experience DLCs so the balance is poo poo!' Like, no poo poo, if you don't use the easily available grinding spots in one and use the other one it'll be different and easier! Awakening just doesn't have any sort of grading system to make you make a bunch of unoptimal choices like in this run. This is a completely legitimate point. And again, I am 100% in favor of the existence of OPTIONAL grinding, whether that be arenas or random map encounters. I'm not quite so into DLCs, but whatever. Heck, I'd be in favor of cutting out the middleman and just letting players directly give themselves gold and XP if they want to. That's an easy and effective way to make the difficulty extremely customizable. Not to mention give people a chance to experiment and try new things without screwing themselves over permanently. Having said that, I do think Awakening's balance was terrible. Just not because of the existence of money/experience DLCs or repeatable random map encounters, those are unrelated. Zore posted:I mean, in relation to the rest of the cast, Frederick is probably the worst Jeigan since Jeigan. He turns out directly equivalent or worse than Seth, Titania, and FE7 Marcus in a game where the power curve is skewed a hell of a lot higher. Yeah, Frederick is horrible and using him extensively is probably the number 1 way to screw yourself on high difficulty no grinding Awakening. But don't even compare him to the original Jeigan. The original Jeigan was not good enough to be a Jeigan.
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Mar 17, 2015 08:15
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I don't know, Hard5 mode in Shadow Dragon gave me a lot more appreciation for Jeigan...though even there he's STILL not even worth using after 3-4 battles or so.
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Mar 17, 2015 12:11
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Melth posted:What's wrong is secretly using an aimbot to beat someone who isn't using one. This is what I was talking about when I said that. quote:Yeah, Frederick is horrible and using him extensively is probably the number 1 way to screw yourself on high difficulty no grinding Awakening. But don't even compare him to the original Jeigan. The original Jeigan was not good enough to be a Jeigan. Fred isn't even optional in the highest difficulties, you absolutely need him for a few maps at least. He's poo poo by the time you reach the mid game, but until the time you get everyone promoted he's actually quite useful to have around due to his pair up bonuses. He's actually one of the best at the purpose of being a Jeigan, which is to make the early game easier for you since you can just park him in the back of a pair up with no weapon and make someone else a tiny god. Fred also has some selective use as a decent dad for some of the kids. He's just not a good unit in his own right.
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Mar 17, 2015 13:17
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quote:
There's a reason they call Lunatic mode Fredrick Emblem Also, he was more like Seth to me.
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Mar 17, 2015 17:44
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Fatcat214 posted:There's a reason they call Lunatic mode Fredrick Emblem Having beaten the first 4 maps on it I would be inclined to say Lunatic+ mode is River Emblem
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Mar 17, 2015 17:50
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Fatcat214 posted:There's a reason they call Lunatic mode Fredrick Emblem He has worse stats than Seth though. And in a game where enemy stats are way higher. Like Seth is a character who is good enough to literally solo his game, no hyperbole. Fred falls off hard after the first few chapters as anything but the back of a pair-up unless you grind him a ton, and thanks to his high internal level that takes way more effort than grinding anyone else. Seriously, he's a level 1 Great Knight with 12 Str, 12 Skil, 10 Spd, 14 Def, 3 Res and 28 HP Compare him to Marcus here who, at level 1, has 15 Str, 15 Skil, 11 Spd, 10 Def, 8 Res and 31 HP. In a game where enemy stats are lower across the board.
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Mar 17, 2015 17:54
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Manatee Cannon posted:Fred isn't even optional in the highest difficulties, you absolutely need him for a few maps at least. He's poo poo by the time you reach the mid game, but until the time you get everyone promoted he's actually quite useful to have around due to his pair up bonuses. He's actually one of the best at the purpose of being a Jeigan, which is to make the early game easier for you since you can just park him in the back of a pair up with no weapon and make someone else a tiny god. Fred also has some selective use as a decent dad for some of the kids. He's just not a good unit in his own right. Oh yeah Frederick's pair up bonuses are great because he's promoted but that doesn't really make him a good unit. That makes him a good pair of pants for some much better unit to equip.
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Mar 17, 2015 21:06
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He is a good unit at the beginning in Lunatic and Lunatic+ because your other units just don't have the stats, even with Fred as a pair up partner, to survive without relying entirely on enemies missing very good hit odds. And that's not a strategy, that's pure luck. He will become the worst unit in the game late on, but as far as his actual purpose goes he is perfect. Like even if you grind and grind later on, Fred just cannot catch up because of his bases. But, again, the end game is not the only thing that matters. The parents are uniformly bad end game units anyway, barring the avatar.
Manatee Cannon fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 22:31
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